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Cli-fi is leading the charge to envision new, sustainable and compassionate social structures.

Climate fiction, or “cli-fi ” as it’s sometimes called, has officially exploded onto the literary scene. The genre has been around since at least the 1960s, with such writers as Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler and J.G. Ballard giving early narrative shape to the climate crisis. Those classic works helped inspire waves of cli-fi over the past 60 years, ranging from futuristic sci-fi to literary fiction set in the present day, and even mainstream movies. George Washington University writing professor Michael Svoboda recently listed a bevy of climate-themed films that hit theaters in 2018, including the dystopian films Downsizing starring Matt Damon and First Reformed starring Ethan Hawke.

Clearly, Americans are interested in the topic. According to a 2018 poll conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, a record number of Americans—a full 73%—believe that climate change is happening.

Yet, according to the same poll, only 29% report being “very worried,” despite an increase in the number and severity of hurricanes and tornados, a worsening of wildfires and the spread of invasive species, even within the relatively climate-stable United States.

Where statistics-heavy media reports fall short, climate fiction writers are filling the gap. Works of cli-fi bring the present reality—and potential future—of climate change into sharper focus: floods, fires and extreme weather events are depicted as the new normal. But it’s not the science behind the crisis writers are focused on—it’s human behavior.

In a recent panel conversation I moderated that included novelist Omar El Akkad (author of the dystopian American War), one audience member asked El Akkad whether he cares about getting the science right in his work. El Akkad’s response: “I care about getting the irrationality of [human existence] right. I think if you can get people to a place where they recognize their own irrationality, you might have a shot [at convincing them to change their ways].”

By capturing that profound irrationality—the contradiction between our refusal to give up fossil fuels even while using them leads to the destruction of mountaintops, international conflict and global warming to a degree never before experienced by humans—authors like El Akkad serve as witnesses to a transformative moment in history, a moment when we are becoming aware of our disastrous influence over the natural world and what that means for the future of our society.

Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, assistant professor of environmental studies at Yale-NUS College, surveyed more than 100 U.S.-based readers and found that works of climate fiction “nudge [their] audience in a slightly more progressive direction” and that “most readers attested to the value of cli-fi as a tool for enabling the imagination of potential climate futures.” One reader, an IT administrator from Tennessee, was particularly struck by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway’s fictional history, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future, a harrowing tale in which humans barely survive the widespread catastrophe of global warming. The reader reported that climate change “was more theoretical before. Now, while fiction, the book has made me more aware of what our planet could become.” The reader also reported “subsequently [sharing] the book with his wife and son, among others.” Other readers also reported sharing their favorite cli-fi stories with loved ones, a pattern that suggests climate fiction might be a useful tool to open dialogues about the crisis with those closest to us.

But dystopian narratives can also have a paralyzing effect on readers, despite climate fiction’s ability to drive home the gravity of the crisis. In the same study, Schneider-Mayerson writes, “From the emotions these readers described, it is clear that their affective responses were not only negative but demobilizing. While some negative emotions (such as anger) can be fuel for personal or political action, others (such as guilt, shame, helplessness and sadness) are much less likely to lead to active responses.”

In other words, the dystopian framing of cli-fi narratives might actually be undermining their potential to spur political and social change.

Schneider-Mayerson goes on, “In place of doom, psychologists suggest that climate communications be framed positively,” which “might include … ‘values and a common cause’ and ‘opportunities for innovation and job growth.’ ” Some cli-fi novels are doing just that, moving away from fire and brimstone in favor of something perhaps more politically effective: telling narratives of collective action. Schneider-Mayerson notes, “These are not the dominant themes in the nascent canon of American climate fiction, though a number of these works—especially [Barbara Kingsolver’s] Flight Behavior and [Clara Hume’s] Back to the Garden—were interpreted by readers as containing messages related to ‘preparedness and resilience.’ ”

Such cli-fi that depicts people banding together to address the climate crisis can help readers recognize the power of collective action. El Akkad’s hope of getting people “to a place where they recognize their own irrationality” might be understood this way: If we acknowledge that climate change is a product of our own collective making, then we might simultaneously realize we have the power to collectively fix it.

The mainstream film industry has yet to catch on to this “positive framing.” In a recent article in Literary Hub, Rebecca Solnit critiques the typical storyline of recent climate disaster movies: “The standard action movie narrative requires one exceptional person in the foreground, which requires the rest of the characters to be on the spectrum from useless to clueless to wicked, plus a few moderately helpful auxiliary characters. There are not a lot of movies about magnificent collective action.” Downsizing, First Reformed and Marvel Studios’ Infinity War and Endgame all feature environmental concerns, but these movies still focus on singular individuals trying to save the planet, often through superhuman means, when in reality no one person can stop climate change.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2017 novel New York 2140 offers one such view of meaningful collective action. The book depicts a New York City partially submerged by sea levels a full 50 feet higher than where they are in 2019. For the city’s rich elite, little has changed—they’re still making millions from their desks in high-rises. But the majority of the city’s population has begun to sour on hyper-individualism and free market ideology. As a superstorm barrels its way to New York, we see forms of collective action stir up and culminate in small movements throughout the city: Middle-class homeowners form a union and a mutual aid society coordinates the distribution of resources during storms. The city becomes home to “open universities, free trade schools, and free art schools” as New Yorkers seek to live more communally. By the novel’s end, a housing bubble bursts and an extreme weather event throws life into chaos. How New Yorkers collectively respond is best left unspoiled, but suffice it to say they maintain their hopeful determination to weather the storm, while capitalism, it seems, may be seeing its final days, amid a global movement to nationalize the world’s banks.

Of course, reading climate fiction won’t change the world alone, nor will simply imagining climate catastrophe and its potential solutions. Creating real social change requires real political action, such as the massive, youth-led Sunrise Movement, which advocates for the Green New Deal. To achieve a livable future in a climate-changed world, we need policy reforms on a global scale.

But cli-fi has the potential to inspire us to get started. Rather than be discouraged by bleak scientific reports or the doom and gloom of today’s popular climate-related films, novels like Robinson’s—and others, like Richard Powers’ 2018 The Overstory, a Pulitzer Prize winner that features an anti-logging protest camp—are leading the charge to envision new, more sustainable and compassionate social structures. Americans already know climate change is happening; now we need to believe we can band together to stop it.

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Amy Brady is the deputy publisher of Guernica Magazine and the editorial director of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing on art, literature and climate change has appeared in the New Republic, O magazine, Pacific Standard, the L.A. Times and elsewhere.

I did not ask you for "proof", which you could not offer in any case. I asked you if you have any "authoritative source" for your goofy theory. Apparently my "current account does not have access to view this page" when I try to view your "remedial lesson". But having scanned your "D-Notice" blog and your other Disqus comments, I judge that any "remedial lesson" you would offer would be closer to "raving lunatic" than "authoritative source." (NASA stopped responding to you? As a taxpayer, that makes me happy..)Of course "gravity isn't proof enough." What a preposterous suggestion. As far as I can tell, gravity doesn't explain temperature. Saturn is 100 times as massive as Earth, but has a much, much colder surface temperature than Earth. Try again..

Posted by TreeParty on 2019-07-02 05:47:31

Your premise that "climate change is not just caused by humans" is deeply flawed. Yes, there are "strong natural components of climate change that humans cannot affect." And those strong natural components (Milankovitch cycles, solar irradiance) are currently forcing global cooling, says the science; it is the unprecedented orgy of fossil fuel combustion that is swamping the natural cooling that should be happening and forcing the temperature of the planet upwards. There are a number of convergent lines of evidence for that conclusion, not least of which is the ocean acidification that is a concomitant, and seriously dangerous, effect of the surfeit of CO2 in that atmosphere. Because humans are causing the warming with all their greenhouse gas emissions, humans certainly can "band together" to slow down or stop the current dangerous global warming; just as humans banded together to reduce the global ozone depletion that was being caused by human emissions of CFC's. Why don't you study up on this topic a bit and get on the right side of history?

Posted by TreeParty on 2019-06-20 15:28:34

We cannot band together to stop climate change.

Humans cannot stop climate change because climate change is not just caused by humans. There is a strong natural component of climate change that humans cannot affect.

Even if humans stopped all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the world's climate would continue to change.

Climate is not static, it changed for millions of years before humans arrived on the scene.

Posted by Michael Lewis on 2019-06-19 21:50:57

Since you are apparently unable to keep m,ore than one thought in your head at a time try this:1. Yeas Climates do change, It has happened before, repeatedly, and man did not even exist for most of them.2. It is an unproven theory that man is the cause of this particular change in climate.3. I never said no one would suffer, just that humans biggest ability is to adapt and innovate. Additionally, what about the suffering that would be caused due to the lack of power and technology that would accompany the break with fossil fuels? The current world population would starve without it's use. The generation and transmission of energy is not currently capable of supporting us all.4. The "hottest 10 years on record" only happened the last decade if you disregard the data manipulation that indicates that.5. no, not "everyone studying that change says" that it is anthropomorphic. 6. in fact the only ones guaranteeing that this one is somehow different than all the previous such events (ie totally the fault of man) all have a vested interest in that being the case. Either financially or that desire to control others I mentioned.7."actual cartoon villains:? are you really that shallow and desperate?8. when you build a house below see level between a river and a lake you do not need anything but stupidity to blame for the Gulf of Mexico "claiming your house.9. so you agree we need more nuclear power? great what was all that previous drivel about? Were you behind on your ignorant screed quota for the day?

Posted by Robert B in Columbus on 2019-06-19 13:53:58

Dang man, you tired from all that Gish galloping? First climate change is an "unproven theory", then it's all good because people will magically adapt to changes you seem to have give about 5 seconds' thought to even if they do happen. Obviously no one will suffer during these planet altering changes because reasons.

So which is it? Is the climate not changing at all? Because if that's your move I'll raise you the Mississippi flooding so much and so long that this year's corn crop is a near total write off. Along with the hottest 10 years on record all happening in the last 15.

Or is it changing after all, but just definitely not for the reason everyone studying that change says is causing it? You know, the one that physicists more than a hundred years ago figured out could happen (Google Svante Arrhenius)? The cause even oil company scientists warned their bosses about in the 1980s? The one every federal agency from NASA to the DoD, even under Trump, all say is driving the change?

And even worse, what if we ditch an energy system run by actual cartoon villains, build a better world and it was all for nothing?!

But at least I'll have my liberty when the Gulf of Mexico claims New Orleans and my house along with it.

Oh, and I think we'll need nuclear power in the mix to deal with it.

Posted by Steve Price on 2019-06-19 13:26:57

Thank you for pointing out that science fiction has never ever been used to explore real problems confronting actual society.

Posted by Steve Price on 2019-06-19 13:02:26

This article is now listed as the Most Read on the magazine's website. Congratulations Diana and Amy. Glad you saw my tweet, with Amy ten minutes later retweeting the news in her own Twitter feed. You both deserve it.

Posted by danbloom on 2019-06-18 18:52:37

I see your point, Robert B. Thanks for adding your two cents into the discussion.

Posted by danbloom on 2019-06-18 01:45:44

Get with the programme of wasting trillions of dollars on an unproven theory that half the countries secretly ignore. All while handing over your rights, liberty, and future to people who have their own self interest and no care for others. The biggest problems with the climate change lie are a straight line protection of biased trends of an incomplete picture, the ignoring of adaptability, and the creative inovativness of humanity.

The proof that most "climate activists" are actually dictatorial autocrats is that most of them want to eliminate nuclear power as well. Anyone who really cares about climate issues would actually push for more energy production by nuclear power.

Posted by Robert B in Columbus on 2019-06-17 16:59:23

Robert B, there is no Planet B. Get with the programme.

Posted by danbloom on 2019-06-17 16:21:51

In other words,we really have no proof of a climate crisis, so we must write fiction to try to scare people

Posted by Robert B in Columbus on 2019-06-17 16:07:52

Typo alert. Since the essay is about climate fiction, not about science fiction, shouldn't the headline reflect the original headline which was online last week and which read, "Climate crisis can be articulated with fiction: novels can lead readers to take action." Why was the author's original headline changed to use the science fiction term rather than climate fiction term? There seems to have been an editing or copyediting mistake made from the headline that actually appears in the print edition, a screenshot of which I have. I hope the editors can fix this typo online. The actual article does not reflect the rewritten headline. The article was fantastic!